This bus has room for YOU!

A while back, I remember reading that the Archbishop of Canterbury complaining about traditional Anglicans leaving the Anglican Communion.  He said something like, “The Anglican Communion still has room for those who are traditional.”  I think his comment shows how badly he has missed the point: if I understand what is happening, those leaving are not interested in whether the Communion “has room for them,” but more importantly the direction in which the Anglican Communion is headed; they’re not so concerned about whether the bus has room for them, but more where the bus is going.  Seeing that the bus is not heading the right direction (as they see it) they would rather get off and get on a different bus.

 

If you allow me to extend the bus metaphor, I’ve seen people choose their bus for a number of different reasons.  Some people will get on a bus simply because their is comfortable room for them.  Others will get on a bus because of the other people; they look like people they like, so at least it will be a fun ride – it doesn’t really matter where it’s going.  Some will choose a bus that looks nice, feels comfortable or is relaxing.  Maybe the music is good.  Other people think the bus is being driven badly and, intending to help those on the bus, will get on with the intention of instructing or replacing the driver, or perhaps even changing the direction.

 

The list of reasons could go on.

 

I chose my bus because I think it’s heading in the right direction to the right place.  It’s not always a nice bus to be on; sometimes there is little room, and it’s crowded, only leaving room to stand, crushed between two large passengers, like a subway in Mexico City.  Sometimes the other people aren’t so nice.  Other times they’re great people.  Sometimes the riding is rough, and it’s hard to hold on.  I’d guess most people have fallen now and then.  It seems to me that it’s actually more of a train than a bus. I’ve heard there are parts that are really comfortable and luxurious, although I haven’t seen them.  Sometimes there’s good music, sometimes it’s horrible; sometimes the road (or perhaps track?) is so rough that you can’t hear the music.  Other times noisy, inconsiderate passengers drown out all other sound. At times, the ride is smooth and quiet, and I enjoy the seemingly perfect scenery outside.

 

In any case, it’s not enough to tell me that a bus has room for me, that it’s comfortable and pleasant or even that the people are nice, intelligent, etc.

My 4-year-old Loves Maps

This is a picture that my 4-year-old son drew at home last week:

When he showed to to me he pointed to the top of the green shape covering the middle/lower half of the page and told me: "Look, here's Canada."  Then, pointing to the middle of the same shape, "this is the United States," specifically pointing out that's where his godparents live, and, finally, pointing to the upturned part at the bottom, "and this is Playa del Carmen." The small green circle at the top of the shape is Mexico City - a little out of place, but I can live with that.

It's a map of North America.  He loves maps!

I remember loving maps when I was a kid/teenager.  I still do.  I'm proud that my 4-year-old son can draw a map of North America that actually resembles North America!  (Besides Mexico City, Greenland kind of got shifted to the other side, but, hey, he's 4, and he drew it from memory, without looking at a map.  I think it's amazing!)

Prosperity and Abundance

In a previous post, I wrote that I don’t believe that poverty in its truest sense exists in most places I’ve been to; even the poorest place I’ve been, where $500 dollars is a massive fortune, the people have never gone a day of their life without more than enough food, the clothing they need and a house to live in.  They have very little, but they are lacking nothing.

This doesn’t mean that true poverty doesn’t exist; it simply means that it in our comfortable world of prosperity and abundance, we have a skewed definition of poverty. Many of us have more than enough food every day of our lives, and money to spend on all sorts of extra items that are in now way necessary to live on, yet we consider ourselves poor or low income.

The village where we live in Canada has a large number of Mennonites arriving from Mexico; many live on incomes much lower than Canadians consider “necessary” with families much larger than Canadians consider sane.  Some church charities have noticed the situation and taken steps to help out.  For example, one day of the week, there is a sewing circle in a church basement here; one of the charities goes to a local grocery store and picks up all the fruit and vegetables that the store can no longer sell.  About 90% of these are still good, and only very few have gone bad.  The people who take these pick out some of the fruit, but leave pretty much all the vegetables and even some of the less popular fruit.  If there were anyone truly living in poverty, I’d suspect after everyone had picked out their favourites, they would pick it up the whole box and take it home to feed their needy family.  But no one does.

I am not complaining about or criticizing abundance, I’m only saying that we are so surrounded by abundance, that we don’t even realize it.  We begin to think that abundance is poverty.

Personally, I’m thankful for some of the benefits that overabundance brings.  Besides regular thrift shops which sell excellent used stuff for cheap prices, there’s a shop nearby called the “Twooney Barn.” It’s basically a thrift shop where you pay whatever you want for things.  You can also exchange furniture, clothing and a bunch of other items.  When you’re done with things, you simply take them back if they’re still good.  My wife went there for the first time today and completed the few things we still need for our new apartment here in Canada.  It helps keep the budget in check.  Places like that wouldn’t be possible without a culture of overabundance.  I’m thankful for and to the people who have too many things and are willing to give away some of those things, despite the fact that they are in perfectly good condition, so people like us can buy them at whatever price we see fit.

So, yes, I’m thankful that we live in a place of abundance and prosperity.  It only surprises me when people don’t realize how abundant and prosperous life really is.  Realizing this would help us do more for those who truly are poor.

Cowboys and Catholics

Since I’ve been interested in the Catholic Church, I was always impressed by the fact that John Wayne, the archetypal Hollywood cowboy, was a Catholic (convert).  I don’t really know anything about his personal life, but I have a few random, possibly unrelated and probably irrelevant and unjustifiable thoughts about this fact.

1. I suspect that the Catholic priests, always in the form of an “old Spanish padre,” holds some important place in the genre of Westerns. I’ve forgotten too much about Westerns to confirm this, but it seems to me that cowboy heroes in movies are mostly indifferent to religion but end up being protectors of innocent religious people when they do show up.

2. If I understand the little I’ve read about his life, John Wayne showed his Catholic Christian values as a political figure; he was typically a hero for conservatives, but a frustrating one, since there were times when he would support the “liberal” side of issues when it came to showing mercy and forgiveness.  Politics have little or nothing to do with real cowboys, and there’s no reason to think that John Wayne’s political stances have any reflection on a real connection between Catholicism and cowboys; the same could almost be said of his religion.  Yet, it in the end, it is John Wayne.

3. There is a good deal about cowboys that people would not generally connect with Catholicism; they tend to be lone renegades, just doing their own thing, not telling anyone how to live, or letting anyone else tell them how to live.  Not too many people would think “Catholic” when they hear this idea.  (Although the Catholic Church does have plenty of renegades – but that’s besides the point, and it’s quite a different kind of renegade.)
Yet, there’s at least one thing somewhat Catholic about the archetypal cowboys. The archetypal cowboy knows he’s a sinner – even though he would never say it in those terms.  He knows that the way he lives is wrong, despite the fact he doesn’t want anyone to change it, anymore than he wants to change what’s wrong about others.  Also when it comes right down to it, he’ll stand up for fight for what’s right; he’ll protect those who really are good when they’re not strong enough to do it themselves.  These two points aren’t exclusively Catholic, but could fit into certain brands of Catholic thinking.

I wish I knew enough to prove some of these points or give examples. I could probably think of a few country songs I’ve heard recently, but I won’t bother for now.  In any case, if cowboys and Catholics have nothing else in common, John Wayne is a pretty good connection just by himself.

The Institutionalized Revolution & Mexican Bureaucracy

 

After our second trip back to Canada, my wife and I arrived at Mexican Customs in the Cancun International Airport.  We hadn’t filled out a customs declaration card. We were a family of mixed nationality returning home. The airline attendants on Westjet simply told us that they couldn’t help us or tell us how to prepare for Mexican customs; even for simple, normal cases of tourists arriving for a week’s stay, it seemed that every time a flight arrived, the requirements and documents changed, and no matter what they told passengers, it ended up being wrong when they actually got to a customs agent and they had to fill out a different form, or put different information, etc.  This didn’t surprise us.  My wife is Mexican, and even after 2.5 years of living in Mexico, I knew how these things went.

 

Then, when we got through the customs line, a disgruntled looking customs agent whose disgusted-looking face showed that she had already decided that you did it wrong even before she saw your card looked at us and grunted, “Where’s your declaration card?”

 

“We don’t have one,” explained my wife. “The people on the airline didn’t know what we should fill out since we’re Mexican citizens returning home.”

 

The agent grabbed a card of the pile, slapped it down in front of my wife and said; “Look.  It’s all perfectly well explained right here” … hesitation … “more or less.”

 

My wife looked at the section that the agent had pointed to.  There was no explanation, but only a statement that the form was for tourists temporarily visiting Mexico. “But this explains what tourists need to do.  We’re not tourists.”

 

“But they’re tourists,” she said, meaning me and my sons.

 

“No. They’re Mexican citizens.”

 

She rolled her eyes.  “Just fill out the form.”

 

I just looked at my wife, smiled and said,  “Welcome home!”

 

My wife, who had been dying to get back to Mexico after only a few weeks of visiting Canada and be back with the warm, loving people of her homeland, suddenly felt a yearning for Canada’s well-ordered offices, straight rows of identical-looking homes and friendly politeness that (to her) seemed unreal and impossible.

 

We never did get proper instructions how to fill out the custom’s claim form, and I’m not even sure if we filled out the right form.  In the end, some guy who couldn’t have care less just stamped it and threw it on the pile without even looking at it.  I can guarantee you that if we had filled out the same form on the airplane, the same disgruntled woman would have yelled at us for filling out that form and made us fill out a different one.  We’ve been there.

---

This story I told here is only a mild case of Mexican bureaucracy.  If you have to deal with the government or office-based services in Mexico, it only gets worse.

 

What ever happened to this side of Mexico?  How could a country of such warm, caring and friendly people have such a messed up system of government and public services that make even the worst of Canadian bureaucracy look heavenly?

 

I’ve recently developed a theory about why.  It’s summed up in two words; Institutionalized Revolution.

 

100 years ago was still the very early stages of the Mexican Revolution; within a very short time, the dictator who had ruled the country for 30 years had been deposed, and the decades that followed were defined bloody in-fighting between the former allies who had originally risen up together against the tyrant in the name of freedom.  In the end, a group of revolutionaries called the Constitutionalists (who favoured the reinstatement of Mexico’s 1864 constitution, defined by values of a democratic republic) eventually managed to kill off or buy out the great general heroes of the war like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa – the latter was first bought out, and then in the late 20’s killed off when he tried to re-enter politics.

 

All was good and well; the tyrant had bee overthrown, and the extremists had been supressed.  The road was cleared for a moderate, centrist, democratic republic.  In theory it sounds good.

 

I don’t know enough about Mexico’s 20th century political history to say where things really went wrong.  But they did.  The newly found constitutional democracy turned into a one-party oligarchy.  The party, formed by the victors of the revolution, was adequately named the Party of the Revolution.  As the time went on, and it became apparent that the name no longer to reflected the institutionalized nature of the single monopolized ruling party, they added one word to bring the name up to date; the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution.

 

As much as this name may be only an error in realistically updating the name of the party, it only too well reflects what has become the reality of Mexico’s offices and services.  Let’s break down the two parts of the idea:

 

Revolution – A revolution by its nature is disordered chaos.  A few radical revolutionaries have valued the ongoing chaos of perpetual revolution as something necessary and good in itself.  However, in most cases, proponents of revolution tolerate its chaos only in the hope of bringing a better order afterwards – an order better in some way than the one that existed before.  In any case, the revolution itself is still chaos.  It’s important that while the revolution in Mexico ended, the ruling party retained the name.  The act of revolution was lost, but, I would say, the chaotic mess it involves was retained.

 

Institutionalized – Revolutions may be chaotic, but they are also passionate and driven forward by those who believe deeply in some cause, and are willing to risk all to promote that cause.  So what happens when you remove the passion, the action and the cause from a revolution?  You replace it with the cold, mechanical bureaucracy of an institution.  All this is the normal cycle of things, but what I think happened Mexico is that the all the worst parts of bureaucracy were set up, while the disorder and chaos of the revolution were retained (without the cause that originally made them worthwhile.)

 

Mexican offices have all the frustrating bureaucracy of the most rigid institutions; yet, they are plagued by inefficiency and chaotic disorganization.

 

Now for the record, I’m not saying that the PRI (the Spanish acronym for that party, which has now been out of power on the federal level for twelve years) is any worse or better than the rest of them; I’m only saying that it’s name very adequately reflects everything that’s wrong with Mexican bureaucracy.

 

Next time you’re in a Mexican office, wondering how on earth a country that is not only very beautiful, full of history, art and culture, but also one of the world’s largest economies could be such a bureaucratic mess, just think, “institutionalized revolution.”   It will all make sense.

 

(And please, if you’re not Mexican, take a moment to consider the pain of those who’ve had to put up with this their entire life.)